SG Morning Highlights: Singapore spent S$72.3 billion on Covid-19 in FY2020 and FY2021, less than budgeted

Advancers / Decliners is 26 to 172, with 126.33 million securities worth S$131.48 million changing hands.

US inflation was firmer than expected in August, likely keeping the Federal Reserve on track for a third-straight 75 basis-point interest-rate hike.

The consumer price index increased 0.1 per cent from July, after no change in the prior month, Labor Department data showed on Tuesday (Sep 13). From a year earlier, prices climbed 8.3 per cent, a slight deceleration.

So-called core CPI, which strips out the more volatile food and energy components, advanced 0.6 per cent from July and 6.3 per cent from a year ago. All measures came in above forecasts.

Singapore's government spent S$72.3 billion on Covid-19 in FY 2020 and 2021, less than the S$100 billion committed in its budgets for those years, said Second Minister for Finance Indranee Rajah in Parliament on Tuesday (Sep 13).

Of this, S$13.4 billion was spent on public health measures, S$50.6 billion was used to protect jobs and S$8.3 billion was for direct household and social support, she said in response to a supplementary question from People's Action Party (PAP) Member of Parliament (MP) Foo Mee Har (West Coast GRC).

For FY 2020, the government had initially set aside loan capital in anticipation of a tight credit market, but this was eventually not needed, she explained.

Emerging Asian central banks have seen a sharp depletion in their foreign-exchange reserves, stoking concerns it may crimp market interventions to curb currency losses in the face of the mighty US dollar.

A closely-watched measure of reserves cover - the number of months of imports a country can finance with its foreign-exchange holdings - has dropped to about 7 for EM Asia ex-China, the lowest since the global financial crisis in 2008, according to Standard Chartered (StanChart). It was about 10 months at the beginning of the year and as high as 16 in August 2020, pointing to an erosion of developing nation firepower to defend currencies.

"The deterioration indicates that central bank intervention to support local currencies might be much more limited going forward," Divya Devesh, head of Asean and South Asia FX research at StanChart in Singapore said last week. "Overall, we expect central banks' FX policy to turn less supportive."

The property, which is located at 1 Buroh Lane, is the real estate investment trust's (Reit) first cold storage facility investment in Singapore, said William Tay, chief executive of the manager, in a press statement.

Assuming the proposed transaction was completed on Jan 1, 2021, the manager expects a distribution per unit (DPU) accretion of 0.56 per cent or an improvement of 0.086 Singapore cent on a pro forma basis.

Back in Feb 2019, Keppel disclosed that there were customer potential claims arising from disputes over the validity of certain foreign exchange fluctuations and cost escalation contractual formulas in a rig contract entered by the Keppel O&M entity.

The entity, which is 75 per cent-owned by Keppel O&M, had provided the standby letter of credit in favour of the customer, for the purpose of repayment of the amounts received by the entity. The sums were calculated based on the contractual formula.

In a joint announcement late on Monday (Sep 12), both parties said new offer shares in Memories (2022) have not been contemplated to be listed on any securities exchange.

Memories (2022) is an associate of Yoma Strategic's executive chairman Serge Pun. Its holding company is First Myanmar Investment Public (FMI), which Pun is a controlling shareholder of.